The Heat Sink And Fans, Detailed

This Hardware Isn't For The Faint Of Heart

As mentioned, this cooler sells as the EKL Peter in Germany and the Deepcool Dracula elsewhere; the two are identical except for their names. We’re using the EKL Peter 79XX Edition for this article.

The Peter is an imposing piece of hardware, monopolizing three slots for the heat sink and two slots for the fans. If that sounds like a ridiculous amount of space for a cooler, that’s because it is a ridiculous amount of space. The EKL Peter will have to prove that its performance is capable of living up to what its size seems to suggest.

On paper, at least, the Peter's specifications are impressive.

Technical Specifications: EKL Peter 79XX Edition

Cooler Size:

253.8 mm Length44 mm Depth (Measured from the Top of the Copper Plate)100 mm Height

Fans

The EKL Peter 79XX Edition can accommodate up to four fans. We're only using two because that's already more than enough for our Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition. A pair of Noiseblocker BlackSilentPro PL2 coolers spinning at 1400 RPM handle the job for us, yielding 96 m³/h of volume.

One big advantage these fans enjoy is that they run well at 5 and 7 V. Two of them are barely audible at 5 V. You could conceivably operate them at 12 V, but then they generate acoustics similar to one of AMD's add-in board partners leveraging an aftermarket cooling setup. Although we'd get much better cooling performance from our heat sink and fan combination, we'd really like to cut noise.

Technical Specifications: Noiseblocker BlackSilentPro Fan PL2

Size:

120 x 120 x 25 mm

Weight:

120 g

Materials:

Plastic

Noise Level:

20 dB(A)

RPM:

1400 RPM

Airflow:

96 m³/h

Air Pressure:

1269 mm-H2O

Start-Up Voltage:

4.5 V

In-Use Voltage:

4-13.8 V

Power:

1.92 W / 0.16 A

Connector:

Three-Pin (20 + 50 cm Cable)

Miscellaneous:

MTBF: 160 000 HoursWarranty: Six Years

Price:

Approx. $20

You can also buy a 900 RPM version of this fan if you want to get even more aggressive about noise, and don't care about overclocking as much. We chose this particular model for its versatility, since it allows us to go for performance or quiet operation without breaking the bank.

Seems to me if you're willing to go 140$ or whatnot to cool your Gfx card, you might be interested in water cooling. 80$ for a Noctua and 100+ for this put you into cheap water cooling territory, and while you could easily spend double or more water cooling, that seems the route to take. Just my two cents.

Seems to me if you're willing to go 140$ or whatnot to cool your Gfx card, you might be interested in water cooling. 80$ for a Noctua and 100+ for this put you into cheap water cooling territory, and while you could easily spend double or more water cooling, that seems the route to take. Just my two cents.

jebbycWhy is there an empty slot between the fans and the heatsink? Looks like there could be some space and efficiency savings there. Also, why did you test 120mm fans when 140mm fans are supported?Where do the additional two fans you haven't tested fit? I guess they might go in the empty slot, but that seems strange to me - why have a fan blowing directly into another fan.

its called push/pull you see it on cpu coolers and watercooling all the time. There are 120mm fans available

it doesn't look to me like there's enough clearance between the main heatsink and the VRM heatsink.

< 10mm

Edit:I've experimented with different VRM coolers (on some photos you can see a slightly lower silver VRM heatsink) and slim fans but only the big black one (original from EKL) gives you the full performance.

The Windforce 5X @1,25 GHz is (under full load) quieter (!) than a Sapphire Toxic 6GB (1,2 GHz, Tahiti XT2) - thats fact. In a few minutes I will try a showdown between this two cards on 3840 x 3240 (6 cheap monitors, DVI only) and 3 active splitters.

Who wants to bet, can transfer me the money to my private account (which is unfair because I know the result - already)

When I see something like this behemoth, it reminds me that we really have a long way to go in terms of technology. I think you can tell silicone/transistor technology is really starting to hit a brick wall when 5 slot aftermarket VGA coolers come onto the scene. For that matter, stock 3 slot products like the ASUS Mars II go without mentioning too.